Theater

Topdog/Underdog: In Suzan-Lori Parks’ carnivorously intelligent, deeply humane play, receiving a bang-up production at the Mark Taper Forum, the only characters are two African American brothers named Lincoln and Booth. Parks’ courage as an artist shows here in her willingness to take an outlandish premise and convert it into an almost unbearable dramatic truth. Though the play is symbolically top-heavy, the production never tips over. Deceptive simplicity is the platform on which “Topdog/Underdog” spins, and director George C. Wolfe and assistant director Raelle Myrick-

Hodges know exactly how much to turn this tightly structured work.

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Ends Sunday at the Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A. (213) 628-2772.